JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

When someone says “Hard Rock”, “Classic Rock”, etc., do you really know what music they are talking about? When someone says Hard Rock in Japan, all that means is rock music with a loud electric guitar. When someone says Classic Rock, do they mean older than 25 years ago? Basically, the music scene has spread out and crossed-over so much that it’s not always easy to decipher exactly what “genre” or “category” is being discussed. Recently I read of a new (at least to me) rock category called “rap-rock”! So to provide some guidance to what I’m talking about when I mention certain terms, here is a basic guideline:

Oldies but Goldies: the stuff where it all began, you know when rhythm and blues had its baby – rock ‘n’ roll!!!

Vintage Classic Rock: the rock sound that most of us who were around grew up within the mid’60s to the mid’70s, with a few sounds from the late ’70s

Classic Rock: this has gotten a little blurrier, but generally early’80’s to mid ’90s

J-Rock: any rock music sang mainly in the Japanese language

J-pop Rock: any rock music mixed with the boy group sound and sang mainly in Japanese

Hard Rock: to me this is screaming vocals and head-banger music (the louder and rougher the better seems to be the theme and direction taken by this sound)

As for Rap-Rock, the only real rock song that I have personally heard that fits into this category is the Aerosmith/Run DMC classic “Walk This Way”! Of course there are several lesser known songs that have come out recently that could almost be classified as Rock-Rap!